Desperately seeking justice

Ill workers and families want the nuclear body to own up~ published in Canvas Life by Sheree Bega

HAROLD Daniels had no choice - he had to grow up fast. It was either that or watch his grieving mother, suddenly lost without an income, struggle even more. The teenager dropped out of high school and went searching for a job to pay the bills.

Today Daniels, who shares his father's name, is a debt collector who chases recalcitrant car owners - it's work that runs on commission and he doesn't earn much.

In a way, he says, it feels as if the painful death of his father, a security guard at Pelindaba nearly 20 years ago, killed his dreams too.

In early 1997, the 40-year-old died of lung and brain cancer, six months after he had been retrenched from the nuclear research facility near Hartbeespoort Dam, run by the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa), where he had worked for 15 years.

He had fallen gravely ill after extinguishing a "radiation fire" at the plant in 1996. Daniels, who had complained his arm and neck were stiff and his stomach swollen, refused to accept the R43 000 severance package his family claims Necsa proffered. In D the end, his wife, Amanda, had to sign for it.

"When my father started to get sick, that's when they they (Necsa) told him to leave," charges Daniels.

"They knew he was going to die and they didn't want him working for them. I remember how tragic and hard it was, visiting him in hospital as he lay there dying."

Now, 64, his mother, Amanda, never remarried.

"Harold was a wonderful husband and a hard-working man," she says, fondly. "We were building our home when he got sick after he ran into that building to stop the fire. They sent him home to die with nothing," remembers Amanda, who lives with her son in Ekurhuleni. Daniels's case - one of two confirmed deaths attributed to radiation exposure at Pelindaba at the time - was among 11 Necsa employees Dr Murray Coombs, an independent occupational expert, referred to the compensation commissioner in 2006.

Non-profit organisation Earthlife Africa had commissioned Coombs to conduct tests on its workers three years after Victor Motha's death in 2001. After inhaling a fluoride gas - used to process uranium for fuel in nuclear reactors - at Pelindaba, the 21-year old came home on November 21, complaining of nausea, and a burning in his throat and chest.

He started vomiting and died that night in hospital.

The then energy minister, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, sent a letter and promised to investigate his death, but his family maintains that that is where correspondence with the department stopped, says the 2011 Greenpeace report, The Trust Cost of Nuclear Power in SA, released in 2011.

His family reportedly received just R6 000 in compensation. In 2007, Daniels was among a group of ailing ex-Pelindaba employees who told a parliamentary inquiry how they had fallen ill because of exposure to nuclear radiation and toxic chemicals at "secretive" agencies such as the Uranium Enrichment Corporation of South Africa and the Atomic Energy Corporation, where highly enriched uranium was used to create nuclear weapons during apartheid.

In her desperate plea for justice, she told parliamentary officials how she had not received a cent of compensation and how Necsa reportedly failed to pay out her husband's life policy because he had skipped two instalments.

Officials promised to investigate the claims of nuclear exposure, but nearly a decade later she and her husband's colleagues are still waiting.

Since 2010, their final hope has rested at the Office of the Public Protector, but its investigation, too, has been fraught with delays.

The probe centres on Necsa's alleged failure to acknowledge or compensate the workers for occupational illnesses and a failure by the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) in its legislated mandate to ensure the protection of workers.

"The investigation is in its final stages," says Oupa Segalwe, spokesman for the office of the Public Protector. "The only matter that was outstanding was the specialist medical testing of seven volunteers of the complainants to ascertain if it can be medically established that they were exposed to radiation. This process took a while to complete but we have just received the full medical report from all the medical specialists." The NNR footed the bill for these medical tests.

Segalwe says its investigators are studying the report. "We've scheduled a joint meeting between ourselves. the Compensation Commissioner and Necsa for early January - wherein we will address all issues around outstanding claims by complainants not yet paid by the commission. It is envisaged that the report will be finalised early next year."

The NNR says it "will wait for the due process of the public protector and take it from there" while Necsa this week took the same approach. "The matter of the former Pelindaba workers is under investigation by the Office of the Public Protector. Necsa is unable to comment on an ongoing investigation as it is an affected party," it says.

For her part, Daniels looks to a former Uranium Enrichment Corporation worker, 62-year-old Alfred Sepepe, who has become a champion of their plight, for hope.

"Alfrad's the only one who fights for us. All the meetings we've been to in Atteridgeville over the years, he organised them and still does. He has sat at the Public Protector's Office for days," she says of the anti-nuclear activist. It was Sepepe who helped motivate former Pelindaba workers to take part in Coombs's occupational health study.

Last month, at the international Nuclear Free Future Awards, he was honoured for his work "to see that the South African nuclear industry worker health problems are acknowledged as occupational disabilities brought on by radiation exposure". Mariette Liefferink, the chief executive for a Sustainable Environment, who presented Sepepe with his award, lauds his activism: "Despite extreme difficulties Alfred remains the only voice for scores of uncompensated former nuclear industry workers.

"By continuing to singularly keep alive this unresolved issue is a tribute to this man's determination and tenacity, which he funds from his meagre pension earnings.

"The thin, wiry Sepepe says his 11 years spent as a maintenance and decontamination worker at Pelindaba from 1989 made him sick - he claims he was never provided with protective gear - until doctors discovered he had testicular cancer: He was operated on at a hospital in Ga-Rankuwa in 1999.

"They asked me how many children I had. I told them I had three. They told me I would not have any more and removed my testicles." He was left impotent.

Back at work in Pelindaba, Sepepe recalls how he was unexpectedly informed his work was being phased out and he was being retrenched. "When I asked my supervisor, they told me I shouldn't ask questions or I wouldn't get a payout," he recalls, claiming he was offered R20 000 for his silence. Necsa has consistently rebutted claims it ever retrenched sick workers.

Sepepe lives in a tiny room at the back of his mother's property in Saulsville, ear Pelindaba. His neatly-made bed is scattered with pamphlets on uranium mining and how to stop South Africa's nuclear ambitions.

But for many, the fight has been too long. Sepepe has laid 62 of his colleagues to rest over the years.

"It's been years of fighting but I won't give up. They must compensate us because too many people are sick. I want my children to have a home. We've taken this issue to the president, to the minister of energy. Nothing has been done. All you ever hear from the public protector is Nkandla, Nkandla. What about us?"

The Greenpeace report notes how those who battle on for compensation "fear the state and its nuclear industry are waiting until we all die for the problem to go away".

Steven Maleka, a gardener, shows his battered, festering legs. Now in his 70s, he worked at Pelindaba from the 1980s and remembers plodding through "red and blue water" that would run inside his boots. "I've been in and out of hospital for years. It's too painful to work."

In his neat home in a nondescript street in Atteridgeville, Percy Msimanga walks slowly to the lounge from his bedroom, leaning heavily on his crutches. Now in his 80s, his asthma makes it hard to breathe. Msimanga worked in a boiler room at Pelindaba until the early 1990s - after he fell sick, he says, he was paid out R27 000 and told to go. He was too ill to work again. "Please help me get my money." he pleads.

Judith Taylor, of Earthlife Africa Joburg, has her doubts.

"The situation will be stretched out until no one is left, but I'm open to being surprised."

Like Taylor, Samson Mohlolo's family have run out of hope. His daughter, Julia, sits in her gown in their home in Atteridgeville trying to comfort her 92-year-old father, who has stomach cancer. The former maintenance worker was retrenched from Pelindaba after his cancer was discovered.

"When he's sick, he always says he wishes he had never worked there. He was trying to provide for us but he never could work again. There's no justice in this world."

MORE than 500 ill workers sought help from environmental NGO Earthlife Africa around the turn of the century.

Dr Murray Coombs, an independent occupational health expert, examined 208 workers. His report in 2006 revealed that 40 percent of the workers suffered probable occupation- related illnesses, including lung cancer, asthma and lung fibrosis as well as skin conditions. Findings couldn't be made for 62 workers because of missing information from the employer. Coombs concludes there will be a significant increase in disease among ex-workers over the next 20 years.

What the SA Nuclear Energy Corporation said about its own R3.5 million investigation Necsa's independent occupational medical doctor examined 50 workers, correlating with their medical records. Not one presented symptoms related to radiation. Most of the group were workers who had been retrenched, aged between 40 and 61, and their "financial burden may have allowed for a high self-selection".

In its 2016 report, Necsa states that high safety standards ensure that no employees are exposed to radiation. Workers were put through monitoring for full blood count and urine testing. None presented with abnormal blood results.

The Federation for a Sustainable Environment co-hosted the recent Nuclearisation of Africa Conference. The event brought together experts and interested parties on matters relating to nuclear energy, waste and mining of radio-active material.

Prof. Nidecker of Radiology, University of Basel, Switzerland. Past president and board member of PSR / IPPNW Switzerland is interviewed along with independent international consultant on energy and nuclear policy releases, Co-author of yearly world Nuclear Industry Status Report, Mycle Schneider. In this podcast they highlight topics and insights from the Symposium, "Nuclearisation of Africa".

Federation For a Sustainable Environment « Nuclearisation of Africa » Symposium 19. Nov 2015 There is a clear global downtrend in the civil use of nuclear power, as documented by the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report and as discussed at the international Symposium on « Nuclearisation of Africa » concluded on the 19th of November in Johannesburg.

Sheree Bega, a multi award winning journalist, of Saturday Star, South Africa’s leading weekend paper, wrote an excellent article titled “Nuclear waste ‘dangerous for millennia, even millions of years, cannot be shut off”. The article was published yesterday in the Saturday Star.

The world has become sober to the unimaginable power of uranium after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and recently, Fukushima.A new set of serious health problems, collectively known as Gulf War Syndrome, and epidemiological data from the Wismut cohort have become available to researchers.

Uranium mining can have detrimental effects on the health of the miners and their families. An interdisciplinary team of doctors and scientists will report on this and on efforts of the nuclear industry to promote the civilian use of nuclear power in Africa at a Symposium in Johannesburg, South Africa from 16th to 19th November 2015.

On 25 June 2014 the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) had a quarterly meeting with several Non-Governmental Organisations to discuss matters of concern. During this meeting, a presentation was made by Ms M Liefferink, Chief Executive Officer of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE). Ms Liefferink requested response from the NNR on a number of concerns previously raised. These were documented and the NNR provided a written response.

The immediate case of the disaster at Fukushima may have been a natural once, but the official report to Japan's parliament says the ultimate culprit was a weak regulation - a lesson South Africa cannot afford to ignore.

FACIAL TREATMENT: Patience Mjadu, 44 inside her shack in Tudor Shaft informal settlement, with her face smeared with toxic soil from mining waste mixed with skin lotion and water. Mjadu believes the soil helps with her pimples and protects her face from the sun.

Despite intensive and extensive investigations undertaken and reports issued by several government departments several years ago into the health hazards associated with a toxic environment in the Johannesburg region, the situation persists with little to no remedial action taken to date.

Soweto, Johannesburg - Thousands of people face evacuation from greater Johannesburg in the Gauteng province - the economic heartland of South Africa - due to toxic sludge from abandoned gold mines laced with high radiation levels.

Experts warn old mine dumps could cause birth defects and brain disorders
Patience Mjadu can't bear the pimples that dot her face. So, like other women in her impoverished informal settlement, she has resorted to a novel but potentially dangerous form of treatment involving toxic and radioactive mining waste.

In the wasteland that is Johan Kondos’s farm, a lush green field brings hope.“This is what a farm is supposed to look like,” he says, gesturing proudly to his prized lucerne crop, seemingly untainted by the surrounding mining pollution.This lone field, and a few beloved cattle, is all Kondos has left of his farm in Hartbeesfontein in the North West.

One of the most abundant heavy metals in the earth's crust, uranium is a known radiological element and toxin. It is also a major by-product of gold mining, historically one of South Africa's greatest economic undertakings. The country additionally began mining specifically for uranium in 1949, primarily for export to the United States and other nuclear-intensive countries throughout the Cold War. As the conflict between East and West subsided, uranium mining waned, with the gold output from the Witwatersrand reef also declining. Today, hundreds of thousands of tons of uranium by-product sit in mine dumps scattered across the country, with 100 000 tons of the heavy metal in Gauteng's Western Basin and Far Western Basin alone, according to Frank Winde of the North-West University at Potchefstroom.

Uranium has been considered both a radiological and also a heavy metal poison, following calcium in its distribution within the body, i.e. building up in bone, and with the principle target for toxicity being the lung and the kidney. Recently, it has been shown that uranium also targets the brain.

"The 2006 Energy Review merely exacerbated the problem. It acknowledged that the UK would not meet its emissions targets without nuclear, but did almost nothing to address the problem of the reluctance of the market to fund a new generation of plants.

The hazardous mining by-product raises two questions – who’s to blame and who should pay.
The acid mine drainage crisis is going to cost someone a lot of money, but probably not the people who caused it. The “polluter pays” principle was next to impossible to apply to the acid mine drainage problem in a retrospective way, said Marius Keet, chief director for mine water management at the department of water and sanitation.

The Federation for a Sustainable Environment is proud to announce the launch of the booklet titled “Rehabilitation of Mine Contaminated Eco-Systems. A Contribution to a Just Transition to a Low Carbon Economy to Combat Unemployment and Climate Change” by Mariette Liefferink of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE). The booklet was commissioned by the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC) in collaboration with the Friedrick Ebert Stiftung.

Last week, the coalition of eight civil society and community organisations that has been resisting the proposed coal mine inside a protected area and strategic water source area in Mpumalanga launched further proceedings in the Pretoria High Court.

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